In a setback for open-land advocates, the
Cook County Forest Preserve District Board today ordered officials to
keep negotiating a lease of about 30 acres to Hinsdale in part to clear
some prairie land for soccer fields.

Before the meeting,
advocates said that allowing Hinsdale to add the soccer fields to the
forest preserve land would violate the district’s policy. District
staff had come to the same conclusion.

But commissioners voted
9-4 to continue the negotiations, saying the final plan could be
devised in a way that's in keeping with the district’s mission of
preserving natural lands for recreational use. (To see how they voted,
please scroll down.)

“What is being brought forth is to continue ongoing negotiations,”
said Commissioner Elizabeth Gorman, R-Orland Park, whose district
includes the sliver of land just northwest of Ogden Avenue and the
Tri-State Tollway at the center of the dispute.

Under the
proposed 30-year lease, Hinsdale would invest $2 million in the land,
which was split off from the rest of Bemis Woods when the tollway was
built. Hinsdale would link the two parcels with walking and biking
paths, Gorman said.

The village would add bathrooms. It also
would fix up the ball field, which sits on two acres at what is now
called Duncan Prairie, and clear another 2-acre wooded area overgrown
with invasive Buckthorn to make space for two soccer fields.

"A
lot of it is not in good health right now, but that’s no reason to give
it away," said Benjamin Cox, executive director of Friends of the
Forest Preserves. "It is open to restoration."

Gina Hassett,
Hinsdale’s director of parks and recreation, noted that the village
plans to restore prairie lands surrounding the fields and put in trails.

Cox
was joined by allies that included leaders of the Illinois chapter of
the Sierra Club, Friends of the Parks, the Civic Federation, the Open
Lands Project and the Salt Creek Greenway Association.

"Creating
a village park by clear cutting areas for soccer fields and restroom
facilities is fundamentally different from protecting and preserving
the flora and fauna," Valentine said.

Cox added, "We give a few acres here, a few aces there, it will be gone before you know it."

The
protesters also back efforts in the General Assembly to split the
Forest Preserve board, which oversees the 68,000 acres of preservers
owned by the district, from the Cook County Board.

As with most
Chicago-area counties, the boards have the same elected leaders. The
two governments were split earlier this decade in DuPage County, where
the county had built landfills on district property.